Sunday, February 17, 2008

Are you afraid of the dark???

Fear has never been my "thing."

Scary movies were only appealing to me when it was an excuse to cuddle up next to a boy, who I would usually be too afraid to touch. Axe murders make clutching to sleeves with sweaty palms and fluttering hearts, completely acceptable.

I can only recount about one time when I've slept with a knife next to my bed and only once have I needed a friend to come rescue me (that was when the mafia visted, seriously. But that's another blog)

Earlier in the year when I was planning a year long trip overseas, people would say, "Oh GOODD, aren't you afraid??"

Call me naive, but I'm pretty sure statistics say I am much more safe in Europe, than walking down Hollywood Blvd everyday after school and even then, I wasn't afraid. Parking half a block away from my apartment in L.A. and sprinting to my front door every night, keys gripped in my hand,white knuckles and breathless speed- wasn't so safe either.

Fear is an incredibly powerful emotion. Fear can create something, out of nothing. Like most children, I had monsters under my bed and I would have sworn on the Bible that they reached through the bed springs and grabbed my ankles a few times. Fear has the power to create something that real. I've mentally created footsteps following me, jiggling door handles, booming voices of intruders and "The Boogey Man."

On the same hand, people being afraid for you, is just as powerful.

SO, every time someone says, "Well, I worry about you......" I want to say, "PLEASE STOP SENDING ME THAT TOXIC ENERGY."

Then I usually get some sort of response like, "Don't stick your head in the sand, blah blah." Well, my head is surely not in the sand, if it were, I wouldn't own two industrial sized cans of mace.

However, It cannot be my focus. If fear is your focus, then paralysis is your outcome. This is partially the reason why half of the time I watch the news, it's on MUTE.

It'd be much easier to sit inside all day, to stay in one place, to drive down the same road, to keep quiet and on a different fear based level: to avoid risk. To make pro's and con's list before every action and let a balance of "con's" outweigh a possible balance of, opportunities.

So when people say, "Aren't you afraid?" I say, "I don't do fear."

Fear has no place in my house.

Now, I'm not a complete warrior; I do get the willies, I do get nervous, I do get anxious (I get anxious, sort of a lot.), I do get uneasy (I've gotten really good at following my gut, even if my uneasiness seems ridiculous and unjustified.), and all of those other low energy emotions. I am HUMAN, so I do have them....Some things that have given me the heebee jeebees lately:

67 comments:

I'm not sure when it started, but I'm always terrified of my house burning town. I mean It's not like i'm dwelling on it all day, but in my town we have one of those VERY loud fire whistles and every time it goes off I try to remember if I unplugged my curling iron and the coffee pot.

I'm also scared that my cats or dog are going to run out of the door when I (or someone else) leave the house in the morning. They're really sneaky like that, and I live right on a main road. Some people (*cough* my mom *cough*) don't pay any attention, so I'm always nervous that when she left the house in the morning she let them out.

And car wrecks...

Okay, all of the stuff I wrote seems a little crazy now that I wrote it out, lol.

My biggest fear as a teen was probaly rejection. It still pops up now and then, but I've been battling it and its not as bad. Probably now my biggest fears are more far-off, such as never being successful or doing what I really love. Basically though, I can control those fears, and I'm on the road to doing so.

I will admit that I am afraid of the Burger King man. That dude is just creepy.

I have a lot of anxieties and they control my life in many ways. Such as I've never gotten my driver's license. And OCD things like checking the stove ritualistically before I can leave my home.

On the other hand, I believe that relative to my fears, I've been very brave. I left a bad marriage even though my biggest fear is being alone. Even my therapist thought I wouldn't leave. And I've risked a lot in my career. So overall, I'd say that when it matters, my courage wins. :-)

Great post. Fear lies at the root of most ills of the world. Fear of losing control over others. Fear of diffrences. Fear of the unknown. Pretty much is a good start behind wars and other such things that have plagued mankind.

I do think phobias are a bit different. That may be a whole other topic for you. :o)

Fear has been a recurring theme in my life, I've always struggled with it a lot. I have (hopefully) been getting better and better at doing things in spite of the fear, finding strength to just do it anyway. It's funny though, because a lot of the things you'd think would scare the hell out of me are the things I don't think twice about (moving to a whole other country for instance...). It's things that no one would guess that freak me out the most. I mean, I guess that's just how the whole anxiety disorder and OCD stuff plays out...

it's easy to let fear consume you, so that's saying a lot that you don't let it. i'm the same way. i try not to let it control my actions, but i do get scared every once in awhile. but then i try to think rational thoughts. sometimes it works. :)

I used to be afraid to sleep on my left side. You see, my door was always on my right, so I slept facing it so that when that inevitable ax murderer came to slay me, I would at least have a glimpse of him before I died. This may seem pretty tame, but I have only recently been able to switch sides, not to mention sleep on my stomach (which I never did, as it provided a much bigger target for said murderer). It's a small thing, but it actually means a lot to me that I can now toss about to find a comfortable sleeping position instead of staring crazily at the door, my left arm getting pins and needles. So I'm living a little less in fear, one night at a time.

I liked the way you posed that question. How much power does fear have in your life?

Oh, I could write an essay on how much I let fear control my life. In fact, there have been moments over the last year that I have let it completely TAKE OVER my life.

But, yes, risk. Risks are good. I have this lyric stuck in my head from a song that I can't even remember right now. But it says something like, "And the risk that might break you is the one that will save you."

I was always really afraid that someone was going to break into our house and kill everyone in my family and leave me until last. I mean, that may be morbid, but I was still incredibly afraid some nights. Sometimes, I couldn't sleep and when I looked out my window, the shadows looked like people trying to get in the back door. I'd creep out of bed and go check the back door just incase. I really needed to stop watching "Unsolved Mysteries" right beofre bedtime...

Unfortunately I must say that fear has a much bigger hold on my life then I would like it too... yet it is really hard to push those fears away. I am working on them... and slowly getting better... but it still has its hold.

Needles scare me... but only when getting blood drawn or shots (im ok with tattoos and piercings - and yes I know that make little to no sense), Clowns scare me too... and for no real reason. And as much as I would like to travel, move, see the world.. I always talk myself out of it, its not a good idea, its dangerous, I cant afford it.... Sometime I wish I could just jump and believe that it will work itself out... maybe on day ill get there...

i have so many weirdo paranoia things, like, people are watching through my window, someone has done soemthing to my computer and can see everything i do, or that i am being followed. dont know why - maybe its bc my dad is a cop and told us horror stories when we were kids to make us be more 'safe'? but yeah, moving to another country, or traveling places alone, totally doesnt faze me at all.... ? im kinda fucked up arent i?

I have always been scared to watch scary movies alone or with someone! and since living by myself I am scared all the time that someone make break in so I keep on going past the door and making sure it is locked! All night. Fires are a fear also, I know I should not live with theses fears, yet I do!

it's good that you have such control of your 'fears.' i think i do as well, but lately i've become very afraid of my future. mainly because i don't know where it's heading... fear of the unknown i guess. other than that huge one, i think i have everything else under control.

I'm scared shitless most of the time! (Kidding!) The fire thing is right up at the top of the list because my childhood home burned down. Getting murdered in some heinous way by a serial killer freak is up there on the list too. However, if I stopped watching ax murderer movies, that would help!

I'm afraid of dead bodies (but not death or dying) and carpet. Can you even begin to IMAGINE all the creepy crawly crap that lurks in carpet. And we sit on it, and take naps on it, and those creepy things are lurking RIGHT THERE in the fibers. Shudder... I'll take wood floors please!

I'm with Maxie on the fear of my house burning down. Especially when I'm not completely control of whether it not it happens, not just due to external factors like electricity faults, but also due to human error from my flatmates. There's been a couple of near misses in the past!

I'm actually scared of tons of things, but I try my best not to let my fear control my life. Weirdly enough, the one thing i'm NOT scared of is walking home from Glasgow city centre in the middle of the night alone. Perhaps cos I'm usually drunk . . .

i am a big-time wimp, afraid of walking home alone in the dark, being the only person in the apartment, taking the subway alone late at night (so being alone is my big fear? ha!), but living here is constantly challenging me to get over those fears, to find a better way to live my life than through fear. oh, and i do not watch scary movies. ever.

I've always had such a fear of sharks that I even had to attend therapy for it. And at 25, it still hasn't ceased much (despite me taking up scuba diving last year). It's so bad, I can't even see a picture of a shark on the TV, Internet, in a book without going into a near state of anaphylactic shock. It's really bad, particularly when you are a travel writer who frequently writes beachy and ocean-based stories. I also won't go anywhere near swimming pool drains (which I associate with sharks, don't ask me why, but maybe it had to do with the movie Pirahnas when they came out of the drain), nor will I close my eyes in the shower (which again, I associate with sharks). I'm a nutcase, this I've been told.

I once had an apartment that appeared to be on a perfectly safe street. But then one day I went to the registered sex offender website and found out that in the building across from me lived like 3 rapists!

So, I guess my point is, don't go to that website if you don't like fear.

That picture alone is scary enough. But I too have irrational fears that really shouldn't be discussed. Ha. It is weird that I'm more scared to get a breast exam then to get a pap smear? I'm strange. That is all I seem to think about lately. It's coming up. Cross your fingers for me.

Having already lived through one house fire, I'm absolutely terrified that I'll have to do it all again. Especially now that I'm renting and I have yet to get renter's insurance (dumb I know). It was really cold one day last week and I was so worried that the pipes were going burst and I'd have to deal with flood damages!

Otherwise the thing that scares me the most is losing my mom. My world would collapse.

I have this strange fear of large statues. Maybe fear is too strong a word, more like an anxiety. It is strange I know. My friends all laugh at me when we get near any type of statue and I get visibly shook up. But only statues of people. I'm not freaked out my the Washington Monument or anything like that. It has to have a face. Like recently I went to visit the FDR Memorial and I could feel myself shaking the closer I got. But I love sculptures, so I deal!

Great post! Sometimes I fear death...never my own but that of someone I love. Or I fear the future...the uncertainty of it all. But then I always find comfort in knowing that life is such a gift and I should spend time living it not fearing it. At the same time I love a scary movie and hiding behind doors or in closets to scare the hell out of my sister. It's such a rush...therefore why it has so much power.

I am scared that someone is always looking in my windows. That is my only real fear, and I guess it is real because when I was a kid we had a "peeping tom" at my old house. Holy shit, it was scary!

Fears about life though, well they exist I just don't let them get to me. I am living by the motto to be the best I can be and do at whatever, I guess the fear of never making it is stuck in the back of my head, from time to time I absorb it, only on bad days.

That 'Cater To You' song is appalling! I always used to say that when it was played on the radio all the time.

My hubster and I made it new lines as a piss-take, we used to sing along and pretend of the lines was "I'll suck your toes clean" and "Wipe your arse for you" and stupid stuff like that. So ridiculous is the song in the first place, we would laugh hysterically.

Dumb moments like that are what make up my marriage. People pass our car when we're out driving and think we're a pack of lunatics.

Great post! I live in Baltimore City so fear is something that's instilled in everyone around here.

But sadly, I'm not scared of getting mugged walking down the street (even though its happened to me). I'm scared of sexual predators and serial killers because you know... serial killers strike often and are everywhere.

I have to admit: I'm a huge wuss. Everything scares me, especially when I'm alone. I'm afraid of the dark, of strange noises, etc. I definitely let fear get the best of me. It's unfortunate. I wish I could be a lot more like you, little miss fearless :)

I don't know about letting fear control me, but I do let myself get a little panicky on the London underground - I use it every damn day, and yet when the trains freeze in the tunnels, my heart still skips a beat.

(And I'm also afraid of losing my underground card too in a gust of wind.)

if you are looking for cool spots...take the L train to BK, get off on metropolitan and head down the block to Dumont for great steak/frittes (if it's still there!) and then keep walkin' down to Barcade for awesome video games and a wide yet obscure beer selection.

I am a moron and just deleted my comment and I'm not even sure how...anyhow.

I think I end up more anxious than scared usually...but do you think they are tied together in some ways? Food for thought.

Anyhow-- my ridiculous fear? That while I am stopped at a stop light or stop sign or cross walk, my foot is going to somehow slip off the brake and I'm going to hit a pedestrian.

My yoga teacher once said that if you were truly being present, then there was very little room for fear because unless something frightening (ie watching your metrocard blow away in the wind)is happening in the present, then there's nothing to be afraid of. I thought that was sort of genius.

I hear you on the fear. I say you can have fear OR faith. Faith in all that's good, positive and great energy. Fear can only be balanced with faith. Envision a pie chart. The more fear the less room for faith. The more faith, the less room for fear.

fear really is powerful...especially at the instinctual level. I've had a phobia since I was two and sat on a bees' nest. It's an irrational fear I'll have to deal with for the rest of my life...highly embarrassing.

It's funny how sometimes fear doesn't occur to me.I live on my own in a basement suite, and it's only when I read these treatises on women's fears at living alone that it occurs to be that I should be freaking out a little more about random creaking noises.

It's nice to know that my fears aren't completely irrational, considering I've spotted many bloggers who have the same fears as me! I, also, am one who is sometimes afraid of being alone. Especially downtown while taking the L, I hate doing it. It creeps me out, and waiting on the underground platform I just assume everyone around me is some sort of rapist/ serial killer. Seriously. It freaks me out. Also, losing my family. I love them all so much- that I really don't know how my life would work if I didn't have them all in it.